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      The Young Progressive Lawyer at the Center of a Marquee Texas Runoff

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      Jessica Cisneros had the backing of national progressive leaders, a cramped campaign headquarters and the help of her father. She’s now taking on Representative Henry Cuellar in a runoff in May.LAREDO, Texas — Just a few years ago, Jessica Cisneros was an intern in Henry Cuellar’s congressional office. Now, the representative’s former intern has forced the nine-term incumbent into a runoff, providing progressives with an opening to oust a powerful moderate Democrat and upend South Texas politics.The runoff election on May 24 — the same day Ms. Cisneros turns 29 — will be a rematch more than two years in the making. In 2020, she came within 2,700 votes of beating Mr. Cuellar in the Democratic primary. Her father and volunteers drove through the district after she lost, picking up her campaign signs. They held onto many of those signs knowing there might be a sequel. So some of her signs from 2020 are out on the streets again in Laredo in 2022, with the old election date painted over.“We knew from the very beginning this was going to be a very tough election,” Ms. Cisneros said Wednesday morning, speaking to a crush of reporters who squeezed into her one-room campaign headquarters, a Laredo storefront tucked between a snack stand and Mexican bakery. “We deserve a lot more than what we’re being offered. And I’m really glad that over half of the voters agree that it’s time for new leadership.”Volunteers at the Cisneros campaign headquarters in Laredo.Jason Garza for The New York TimesMs. Cisneros’s success in forcing Mr. Cuellar into a runoff was one of the most striking results of Tuesday’s primary election in Texas, the first of the 2022 midterm season. In Texas primaries, any candidate who finishes below 50 percent faces the No. 2 vote-getter in a runoff. As of Wednesday evening, Mr. Cuellar had won 48.4 percent of the vote, Ms. Cisneros had 46.9 percent and another liberal candidate, Tannya Benavides, had 4.7 percent.Though she has frequently been compared to Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York — the two campaigned together in San Antonio last month — Ms. Cisneros is no firebrand. While she pushes for many of the same progressive policies as Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, including the Green New Deal and a $15 federal minimum wage, Ms. Cisneros has campaigned heavily on what she describes as more bread-and-butter issues in this border district — jobs and health care.The results from Tuesday showed the ideological and geographic split among South Texas Democrats.The congressional district stretches from the edge of San Antonio to Laredo and to rural counties along the southern border. Ms. Cisneros performed best in the northern reaches of the district that are farthest from the border, beating Mr. Cuellar in Bexar County, which includes San Antonio. But she lost to him in Webb County, which includes Laredo, and in the more rural areas closer to the border, including Zapata and Starr Counties. The newly redrawn district lines included more of liberal San Antonio and appeared to help Cisneros.A Guide to the 2022 Midterm ElectionsPrimaries Begin: The Texas primaries officially opened the midterm election season. See the full primary calendar.In the Senate: Democrats have a razor-thin margin that could be upended with a single loss. Here are the four incumbents most at risk.In the House: Republicans and Democrats are seeking to gain an edge through redistricting and gerrymandering.Governors’ Races: Georgia’s contest will be at the center of the political universe, but there are several important races across the country.Key Issues: Inflation, the pandemic, abortion and voting rights are expected to be among this election cycle’s defining topics.The politics of South Texas do not fit easily into national norms. Senator Bernie Sanders won several parts of the district in the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. But at the same time, Donald J. Trump dramatically improved his performance with voters in the larger South Texas region in the 2020 general election. That shift has alarmed many Democrats, who warn that Latino voters along the border are increasingly skewing to the right.Ms. Cisneros has dismissed those views, arguing that the area is seen as conservative largely because Mr. Cuellar helps perpetuate the idea. Mr. Cuellar, in turn, has criticized Ms. Cisneros’ endorsements from political leaders outside Texas, including Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.“South Texas is its own district,” Ms. Cisneros said in an interview in 2019 with The Laredo Morning Times. “We are placed in a very unique spot in terms of politics and also geographically, being right here on the border. But fundamentally I think the big issues are being able to address things like poverty — the rampant poverty that we have here on the border — health care access and the jobs issue.”Jessica Cisneros campaigning with her father, Jose Luis Cisneros.Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesLike Mr. Cuellar, Ms. Cisneros is the child of immigrants from Mexico.Her parents moved to the United States before she was born, after their older daughter needed serious medical care. Her father worked in agriculture and later opened a small trucking company. After growing up in Laredo and graduating as the valedictorian from Early College High School, Ms. Cisneros moved to Austin to attend the University of Texas and went on to law school there, focusing on immigration law.During the campaign, Ms. Cisneros has frequently referred to her work as an immigration lawyer, citing her efforts helping asylum seekers who were stuck at the border under the Trump administration’s Remain in Mexico policy.She has frequently relied on immigration to contrast herself with Mr. Cuellar, who has been an outspoken critic of President Biden on the issue. Mr. Cuellar has said the president has been too lax on border security and has not done enough to listen to the views of Border Patrol agents. Ms. Cisneros has said she supports overhauling decades-old laws that make up the immigration and deportation system.But for all the divisive issues that have helped define her campaign nationally, many voters who supported her were simply focused on a change in leadership, particularly as Mr. Cuellar faces an F.B.I. investigation.On Tuesday night, Ms. Cisneros and her supporters gathered outdoors behind a Laredo strip mall, cheering each time the vote tally showed her edging out Mr. Cuellar. That lead had eroded by the time she took the stage just after 11 p.m., but the mood hardly dampened. It was unclear at that hour whether she had earned enough votes to force a runoff.Standing in front of her parents, sister and niece, Ms. Cisneros assured the crowd, in both English and Spanish, that she was confident she would win. “Tonight, tomorrow or in May,” she said. More

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      Democrats Struggle to Energize Their Base as Frustrations Mount

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      Even as President Biden achieves some significant victories, Democrats are warning that many of their most loyal supporters see inaction and broken campaign promises.Democrats across the party are raising alarms about sinking support among some of their most loyal voters, warning the White House and congressional leadership that they are falling short on campaign promises and leaving their base unsatisfied and unmotivated ahead of next year’s midterm elections.President Biden has achieved some major victories, signing a bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure bill and moving a nearly $2 trillion social policy and climate change bill through the House. But some Democrats are warning that many of the voters who put them in control of the federal government last year may see little incentive to return to the polls in the midterms — reigniting a debate over electoral strategy that has been raging within the party since 2016.As the administration focuses on those two bills, a long list of other party priorities — expanding voting rights, enacting criminal justice reform, enshrining abortion rights, raising the federal minimum wage to $15, fixing a broken immigration system — have languished or died in Congress. Negotiations in the Senate are likely to further dilute the economic and climate proposals that animated Mr. Biden’s campaign — if the bill passes at all. And the president’s central promise of healing divisions and lowering the political temperature has failed to be fruitful, as violent language flourishes and threats to lawmakers flood into Congress.Interviews with Democratic lawmakers, activists and officials in Washington and in key battleground states show a party deeply concerned about retaining its own supporters. Even as strategists and vulnerable incumbents from battleground districts worry about swing voters, others argue that the erosion of crucial segments of the party’s coalition could pose more of a threat in midterm elections that are widely believed to be stacked against it.Already, Mr. Biden’s approval ratings have taken a sharp fall among some of his core constituencies, showing double-digit declines among Black, Latino, female and young voters. Those drops have led to increased tension between the White House and progressives at a time of heightened political anxiety, after Democrats were caught off-guard by the intensity of the backlash against them in elections earlier this month. Mr. Biden’s plummeting national approval ratings have also raised concerns about whether he would — or should — run for re-election in 2024.Not all of the blame is being placed squarely on the shoulders of Mr. Biden; a large percentage of frustration is with the Democratic Party itself.“It’s frustrating to see the Democrats spend all of this time fighting against themselves and to give a perception to the country, which the Republicans are seizing on, that the Democrats can’t govern,” said Bishop Reginald T. Jackson, who leads the A.M.E. churches across Georgia. “And some of us are tired of them getting pushed around, because when they get pushed around, African Americans get shoved.”Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, a leading House progressive, warned that the party is at risk of “breaking trust” with vital constituencies, including young people and people of color.“There’s all this focus on ‘Democrats deliver, Democrats deliver,’ but are they delivering on the things that people are asking for the most right now?” she said in an interview. “In communities like mine, the issues that people are loudest and feel most passionately about are the ones that the party is speaking to the least.”Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and other Democrats acknowledge that a significant part of the challenge facing their party is structural: With slim congressional majorities, the party cannot pass anything unless the entire caucus agrees. That empowers moderate Democrats like Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia to block some of the biggest promises to their supporters, including a broad voting rights bill.A more aggressive approach may not lead to eventual passage of an immigration or voting rights law, but it would signal to Democrats that Mr. Biden is fighting for them, said Faiz Shakir, a close adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Mr. Shakir and others worry that the focus on the two significant pieces of legislation — infrastructure and the spending bill — won’t be enough to energize supporters skeptical of the federal government’s ability to improve their lives.“I’m a supporter of Biden, a supporter of the agenda, and I’m frustrated and upset with him to allow this to go in the direction it has,” said Mr. Shakir, who managed Mr. Sanders’s presidential run in 2020. “It looks like we have President Manchin instead of President Biden in this debate.”He added: “It’s made the president look weak.”The divide over how much attention to devote to staunch Democratic constituencies versus moderate swing voters taps into a political debate that’s long roiled the party: Is it more important to energize the base or to persuade swing voters? And can Democrats do both things at once?White House advisers argue that winning swing voters, particularly the suburban independents who play an outsize role in battleground districts, is what will keep Democrats in power — or at least curb the scale of their midterm losses. They see the drop among core groups of Democrats as reflective of a challenging political moment — rising inflation, the continued pandemic, uncertainty about schools — rather than unhappiness with the administration’s priorities.“It’s November of 2021, not September of 2022,” John Anzalone, Mr. Biden’s pollster, said. “If we pass Build Back Better, we have a great message going into the midterms, when the bell rings on Labor Day, about what we’ve done for people.”Even pared back from the $3.5 trillion plan that Mr. Biden originally sought, the legislation that passed the House earlier this month offers proposals transforming child care, elder care, prescription drugs and financial aid for college, as well as making the largest investment ever to slow climate change. But some of the most popular policies will not be felt by voters until long after the midterm elections, nor will the impact of many of the infrastructure projects.Already, Democrats face a challenging education effort with voters. According to a survey conducted by Global Strategy Group, a Democratic polling firm, only about a third of white battleground voters think that either infrastructure or the broader spending bill will help them personally. Among white Democratic battleground voters, support for the bills is only 72 percent.Representative James E. Clyburn, the high-ranking House Democrat from South Carolina and a close ally of Mr. Biden, said the way the bills were negotiated and reported in the media had voters in his district asking him about money that was cut from initiatives rather than the sweeping benefits.“People stopped me on the streets saying we cut money from our H.B.C.U.s,” Mr. Clyburn said, pointing out that more funding for historically Black colleges and universities will be added in the coming years of the administration. “So while everybody keeps blaming the Democrats, Democrats, Democrats, it’s the Senate rules that are archaic, and stop us from passing these bills.”Mr. Clyburn and other lawmakers say they struggle to explain the vacillations of congressional wrangling to their voters, who expected that by electing Democrats to the majority they would be able to pass their agenda.“Nobody thought about the filibuster and the realities,” said Representative Steve Cohen, Democrat of Tennessee. “People don’t understand the Byrd rule and the parliamentarian and the things we have to put up with. It does lower their enthusiasm.”Atlanta voters cast their ballots last November. Mr. Biden won more than 90 percent of Black voters in Georgia, but inaction on voting rights has weakened their support.Jessica Mcgowan/Getty ImagesAs they’ve begun to do with the infrastructure bill, the White House plans an aggressive approach to sell the social policy legislation once it passes, dispatching Mr. Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and other top officials for events across the country.“There is a real window of opportunity to show the cooperation and competence people expect from us,” said Representative Josh Gottheimer, Democrat of New Jersey and a leader of a moderate wing of lawmakers in congressional negotiations. “It’s up to us to communicate what we just accomplished for families and for the country.”Yet many activists say the White House is to blame for failing to aggressively push for the central promises made to their supporters during the campaign. They said they wanted Mr. Biden to leverage both his bully pulpit and executive powers to tackle student loans, criminal justice, immigration reform and other issues.“We’re talking about democracy in such a crisis and here we are with very few legislative days left and the lack of urgency is deafening,” said Dr. Barbara Williams-Skinner, a minister and civil rights advocate who has helped lead the response from faith leaders on voting rights. “For the president to say he can only do one thing at a time is simply not true.”Lorella Praeli, the president of Community Change Action, a group advocating immigration reform, offered a terse warning to the administration about keeping Latino support: “There are no participation trophies.”Some of the most popular policies in the social safety net bill that passed the House won’t be felt by voters until long after the midterm elections.Tom Brenner for The New York TimesAlready, the national environment looks difficult for Democrats, who may lose seats in redistricting and face the historical trend of a president’s party losing seats during his first term in office.Tomás Robles, the co-chair of Lucha, a Latino civil rights group based in Phoenix that is widely credited with helping Democrats win the state in 2020, said people were “disillusioned and unmotivated” by what they had seen in the first 10 months of Democratic governance.“When you’re not passing bold progressive policies, you have to be able to show something,” Mr. Robles said. “President Biden gets the most blame because he’s the most visible, but it’s the party as a whole that has failed its voters.”In Georgia, inaction on voting rights has fueled a steepening decline of enthusiasm for Mr. Biden among Black voters. The New Georgia Project, a progressive civil rights group, conducted a study last month of Black voters in Georgia, and found that 66 percent approved of the job Mr. Biden was doing, and 51 percent thought that his administration was working to address the concerns of the Black community. In 2020, Mr. Biden won more than 90 percent of Black voters in Georgia.Representative Cori Bush, a progressive whose district includes large parts of St. Louis, said the social safety net and climate provisions included in the bill that passed the House could not be pared down any further. And, she added, the White House has to follow through on other provisions if Democrats want to excite Black voters — perhaps the party’s most loyal constituency — ahead of the midterm elections.“Do I believe Black community members will be happy to see these investments? Absolutely. Will they feel like this has changed their lives in some ways? Yes,” Ms. Bush said. “But will this be enough to excite? When you’re excited, that means that you feel like something else is coming. You have hope that more is happening. So what’s next?” More

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      A.O.C. on Why Democrats’ ‘Talking Points Are Not Enough’

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      The House progressive spoke about “demoralizing” congressional negotiations, how she was told to stay away from Virginia’s elections, and what it means to excite the Democratic base.Last year, after Joseph R. Biden Jr. won the Democratic presidential nomination, a group of progressive lawmakers rallied around him to project party unity at a critical time.More than a year later, as the president seeks to pass a robust spending package of social policies that represent the bulk of his domestic agenda, many of the same leaders are looking for a return on their political investment.In an interview with The New York Times, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, one of the country’s most prominent progressives, questioned whether Democratic leaders and the White House understood the scope of the demands coming from the party’s base. The interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.Why do you feel this social policy bill has to pass as soon as possible, at the biggest scale possible?I think the stakes are really, really high.The entire reason that the Progressive Caucus gave their votes [for the infrastructure bill] was based on direct promises from the president, as well as direct promises from more conservative Democratic holdouts. And from House leadership as well. So if those promises don’t follow through, it’s going to be very, very difficult for them to get votes on anything moving forward, because the trust that was already so delicate will have been broken.Do you think these extended negotiations and the stuff that was cut will have an electoral effect? Obviously the Senate will have its say, but if the spending bill largely looks like what the House passed this week, will Democrats say it fulfills the promise of Election Day?I think that if we pass the Build Back Better Act as the House passed it, that we have a shot to go back to our communities and say we delivered. But that’s not to say that this process has not been demoralizing for a lot of folks, because there were enormous promises made. Not just at the beginning, and not just during the election, but that continued to be made.And this is where I have sounded the alarm, because what really dampens turnout is when Democrats make promises that they don’t keep.With the bipartisan infrastructure plan, there’s all of these headlines going around. And I understand the political importance of making a victory lap. But I think that the worst and most vulnerable position we could be in is to over-promise and under-deliver.So let’s not go around and say, “We’re going to replace every lead pipe in this country,” because according to the bipartisan infrastructure plan, that is not going to happen. That has not been funded. And if the Build Back Better Act gets cut even further, then that’s definitely not going to happen. You and other progressives backed Biden during the general election. Do you feel that this White House has continued to be open to the left? And that created trust, because trust requires vulnerability from all parties.There was some good faith with the American Rescue Plan [Democrats’ $1.9 trillion economic stimulus package, signed in March]. But after that, which was quite early, it’s been a bit of a slog.I actually don’t direct this critique directly at the White House. I think, in general, the party doesn’t quite fully grasp what is happening in deep-blue communities.What is it that you say they’re missing?The talking points are not enough.Yes, is child care great? Absolutely. Universal pre-K, this is something I’m deeply, deeply supportive of. But we also have too much of a top-down strategy when it comes to our base. We’re always giving them the medicine and telling them what they need to accept, as opposed to really monitoring where the energy is, and being responsive to it. And allowing that to shape our strategy.And even with the infrastructure plan, this kind of investment is deeply needed in underserved communities like the Bronx. However, if we as a party are asking every single person in this party to take a victory lap, and do a news conference in front of a bridge or pothole, and we aren’t funding and actually fixing that pothole, I’m very concerned about how people are going to interpret that a year from now.But doesn’t the White House agree — didn’t it propose a more robust package? The obvious response here is that the administration faces the reality of a 50-50 Senate.There is an enormous amount of executive action that they’re sitting on that I think is underutilized. On student loans. We’ve got executive action on the table with respect to climate. There are certainly things that we can do with immigration.So why are we taking this as a legislative compromise, when the opportunity is so much greater, or when Biden could do this stuff with a stroke of a pen, and is just reminding us that he’s choosing not to?We always try to tell people why they need to settle for less, instead of being able to harness the energy of our grass roots and take political risks in service of them, the same way that we take political risks in service of swing voters. We can do both. The Infrastructure Bill at a GlanceCard 1 of 5The bill receives final approval. More

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      After Adams Criticizes the Left, New York Democrats Try to Clear the Air

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      Representative Nydia Velázquez reminded Eric Adams to treat everyone with respect, and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez echoed her comments.When Eric Adams arrived on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, he received a warm welcome from members of the state’s congressional delegation — but also a pointed reminder about the importance of unity.At a closed-door meeting of New York Democratic elected officials, Representative Nydia M. Velázquez advised Mr. Adams, the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York City, to avoid any appearance of criticizing members of the delegation, according to seven people familiar with the exchange.“I said I wanted to remind him that in the age of social media and communications, that we needed to be careful as to what we say and that it is important that we treated everyone with respect,” said Ms. Velázquez, an emerging leader of the party’s progressive wing in the state, confirming the account.Her remarks came a day after The New York Post reported that Mr. Adams cast the Democratic Socialists of America as an archenemy at a recent fund-raiser. He did not mention Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez by name, the report said. But some nevertheless saw his remarks as implicit criticism of the congresswoman, who is closely associated with the democratic socialist group, particularly given Mr. Adams’s rebuke of her policing positions during the primary.“It was important to clear the air,” Ms. Velázquez said. “I said, ‘Look, we have disagreements, and we have different approaches, and we have different philosophies, but that doesn’t entitle anyone to be disrespectful to anyone.’ And I want for him to know that I am prepared to call people out when those things happen.”Rep. Nydia Velázquez has become an influential power broker in the Democratic Party’s progressive wing.Pool photo by Susan WalshIn a brief interview Wednesday evening, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez declined to discuss the meeting with Mr. Adams specifically but offered him a piece of advice.“It is always a good idea for any mayor to respect all of the members that are responsible for representing the delegation, and not just to respect us as individuals but to respect the communities that we represent,” she said. “I think it’s important to preserve that on a higher note.”The gathering illustrated both opportunities and perils for Mr. Adams, the brash Brooklyn borough president who is almost certain to become mayor of New York City, where registered Democrats vastly outnumber Republicans. He has a penchant for hyperbole and can veer into strikingly sharp criticism of opponents, as he sometimes did during the mayoral primary campaign. Ms. Velázquez’s admonition was a reminder that in her view, he risked doing a disservice to New York if he were to antagonize members of its delegation.But for now, delegation members and other national Democrats appear eager to embrace Mr. Adams, and several attendees said he reciprocated with strong interest in engaging with Washington and in resetting relationships after a bruising primary.“After Election Day, we’re no longer campaigning,” Mr. Adams said. “We’re governing.”Mr. Adams stressed to reporters after the meeting that he had not singled out Ms. Ocasio-Cortez by name as a political foe.The delegation meeting marked a significant day for Mr. Adams, who met with some of the highest-ranking Democrats in the nation, including Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, the No. 3 House Democrat; Representative Hakeem Jeffries, New York’s top House Democrat; and the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer.“Eric is going to be a mayor for all New Yorkers, regardless of party or ideology,” said Evan Thies, Mr. Adams’s campaign spokesman. He did not dispute the attendees’ accounts of Mr. Adams’s exchange with Ms. Velázquez.Several lawmakers said that Mr. Adams approached the meeting hoping to engage Democratic lawmakers across the ideological spectrum, including those who opposed him in the primary.It was a chance, they said, to build strong working relationships as New York City navigates staggering challenges concerning public health, safety, education and the economy.Representative Ritchie Torres, an early backer of Andrew Yang’s mayoral campaign, said Mr. Adams “recognizes that the partnership between the New York City congressional delegation and the mayor is indispensable.”“He essentially said that he cannot succeed without the delegation,” said Mr. Torres outside the event. “The delegation is united in enabling him to govern New York as effectively as possible. Everything else is secondary.”Mr. Torres and others in attendance said Mr. Adams demonstrated humility and a clear eagerness to collaborate.Representative Jamaal Bowman, a left-wing lawmaker, dismissed primary season disagreements as “water under the bridge,” though he said he supported Ms. Velázquez’s remarks in the meeting. He said he and Mr. Adams found common ground around issues of education and ensuring students receive sufficient support. “We’ve got to work together to meet the needs of the city,” he said.Ms. Velázquez emphasized that they had also discussed issues including affordable housing, and she pledged to work with Mr. Adams “because it’s about the city of New York.”Mr. Adams, who also attended a meeting of the Congressional Black Caucus, was invited to the delegation gathering by Representative Jerrold Nadler, the dean of the congressional delegation, both men said.After the meeting, Mr. Adams said in a statement that attendees discussed issues including combating gun violence, doubling federal investment in the New York City Housing Authority, improving education and child care and battling climate change.He took several questions from the news media, flanked by Mr. Jeffries; Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, the chairman of the House Democratic campaign arm; and Representatives Adriano Espaillat and Thomas Suozzi, two significant endorsers.Mr. Adams, a former police captain who sought to combat police misconduct from within the system, ran for office promising to battle both violent crime and racial injustice. In the primary, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez endorsed Maya Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio who called for a narrower role for the police in public safety. After Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s endorsement, Mr. Adams claimed that she and Ms. Wiley “would endanger the lives of New Yorkers” with their policies.After several of Ms. Wiley’s most progressive rivals for the nomination faltered, many left-wing New Yorkers coalesced behind her. Some of those Democrats looked askance at Mr. Adams’s policy positions, including his embrace of the business and real estate sectors and his support for charter schools. A former senior adviser to Justice Democrats, an organization that played a key role in elevating Ms. Ocasio-Cortez to Congress, led a small super PAC that campaigned for Ms. Wiley, and against Mr. Adams.As Mr. Adams’s meeting with the delegation wrapped up, there was one more show of unity between Ms. Velázquez and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez: Ms. Ocasio-Cortez put her arm around Ms. Velázquez, and they walked off in an extended embrace.Nicholas Fandos and Chris Cameron contributed reporting from Washington. More

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      An Accusation Blew Up a Campaign. The Media Didn’t Know What to Do.

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      Handling a delicate allegation of sexual misconduct is a lot more challenging than covering a horse race.Two days after coming in fifth in the election night count of votes for New York mayor last week, Scott Stringer was sitting in a high-polish diner in TriBeCa, drinking his second bottle of Sprite and trying to figure out what had happened.He held up his iPhone to show me a text message he had received on Election Day from one of the progressive elected officials who had endorsed him and then dropped him after a woman accused him of sexually assaulting her more than 20 years ago. In the text was a photograph of the official’s ranked-choice ballot. Mr. Stringer was ranked first.“This profile in courage,” he began, half laughing. “You can’t make this up. Who does that?”Mr. Stringer, the 61-year-old New York City comptroller, isn’t the only one trying to puzzle out what happened over a few days in April in the campaign. Mr. Stringer, a geeky fixture in Manhattan politics, had been among the leading candidates when the woman, Jean Kim, accused him of touching her without her consent in the back of taxis. Suddenly he, the media covering him, his supporters and Ms. Kim were all reckoning with big questions of truth, doubt, politics and corroboration.The allegations against Mr. Stringer did not divide a nation, as Christine Blasey Ford’s accusations against Brett Kavanaugh did. Nor did his candidacy carry the kind of high national stakes that came with Tara Reade’s allegations against Joseph R. Biden Jr. last spring. But maybe for those reasons, Ms. Kim’s claim that Mr. Stringer assaulted her when she worked on his New York City public advocate campaign in 2001 offers an opportunity to ask how journalists, political actors and, most important, voters are supposed to weigh claims like Ms. Kim’s. They also raise the question of how and whether to draw a line between those claims and the ones that helped ignite the #MeToo movement.As much as the exposure of police brutality has been driven by cellphone video, the #MeToo movement was powered by investigative journalism, and courageous victims who chose to speak to reporters. The movement reached critical mass with articles by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey of The New York Times and Ronan Farrow of The New Yorker on the movie producer Harvey Weinstein, which the Pulitzer Prize committee described as “explosive” revelations of “long-suppressed allegations of coercion, brutality and victim silencing.” Those stories and other notable sets of revelations — about the financier Jeffrey Epstein, the sports doctor Larry Nassar, the singer R. Kelly, the comedian Bill Cosby — drew power from rigorous reporting that helped develop new standards for covering what had long been dismissed as “he said, she said.”Crucially, reporters honed the craft of corroboration, showing that an accuser had told a friend, a relative or a therapist at the time of the episode and that the accuser wasn’t simply relying on old memories. The reporters also looked for evidence that the accuser’s account was part of a pattern, ruling out a single misunderstanding.Those technical aspects of the stories weren’t always widely understood. But the landmark investigations were, even in this divided moment, unifying. There was no serious partisan division over any of those men’s guilt because the journalistic evidence was simply so overwhelming. But not every allegation — and not every true allegation — can meet that standard. Not every victim is able to talk about it immediately; not every bad act is part of a pattern.In the case of Mr. Stringer and Ms. Kim, observers were left simply with his claim their relationship was consensual, and hers that it wasn’t. Ms. Kim’s lawyer had circulated a news release, which didn’t mention Ms. Kim, to reporters the evening of April 27.At her news conference on April 28, Patricia Pastor, Ms. Kim’s lawyer, read a statement based on Ms. Kim’s recollection, which didn’t include contemporaneous corroboration, which Ms. Kim said didn’t exist, or a suggestion of a pattern. And the lawyer angled the statement for maximum impact: The statement referred to Ms. Kim, for instance, as an “intern,” when she had been a 30-year-old volunteer. And Ms. Pastor claimed, incorrectly, that Ms. Kim had been introduced to Mr. Stringer by Eric Schneiderman, who was forced to resign as New York’s attorney general in 2018 after a report that he had physically abused at least four women.Mr. Stringer said he had a passing, consensual relationship with Ms. Kim and was stunned by her claims that they had never had a relationship. But he said that he understood why the media picked up the story, even if it hadn’t been corroborated.“Running for mayor, every part of your life is an open book,” he said. “I didn’t begrudge anybody, including The Times, from writing about the charge. That would be silly.”And victims, of course, have no obligation to tell their stories through skeptical journalists. Ms. Pastor pointed out in an interview that “once the story was out, you still have time” to report it out and check the facts, and said she and her client didn’t object to that fact-checking. The Times’s Katie Glueck did that on May 9 and found Ms. Kim and Mr. Stringer telling very different stories in the absence of definitive evidence.Jean Kim said Mr. Stringer assaulted her when she worked on his New York City public advocate campaign in 2001. He has denied her claim.Sarah Blesener for The New York TimesBut by then, the story had jumped out of journalists’ hands and into politicians’. Mr. Stringer had painstakingly assembled a coalition of young progressives, including a cadre of state senators who had partly defined their careers by pressing to extend the statute of limitations in cases of child sexual abuse and telling their own harrowing stories. In a video call the day after Ms. Kim’s news conference, they pressed Mr. Stringer to issue a statement suggesting he and Ms. Kim might have perceived their interaction differently.When he refused, and flatly denied the allegation, 10 progressive officials withdrew their endorsement.That decision got journalists off the hook. Most were covering a simple, political story now — a collapsing campaign — and not weighing or investigating a complex #MeToo allegation.The progressive website The Intercept (which had exposed a trumped-up sexual misconduct claim against a gay Democrat in Massachusetts last year) also looked into Ms. Kim’s accusations, calling former Stringer campaign aides, and found that a series of widely reported details from Ms. Pastor’s statement — though not Ms. Kim’s core allegations — were inaccurate. A longtime New York political hand who had known both Mr. Stringer and Ms. Kim at the time, Mike McGuire, also told me he’d been waiting to talk on the record about what he saw as factual errors in Ms. Kim’s lawyer’s account, but that I was only the second reporter to call him, after Ms. Glueck. Ms. Kim, meanwhile, had been open about her motives — she wanted voters to know about the allegation.It’s easy to blame the relative lack of curiosity about the underlying story on the cliché of a hollowed-out local press corps, but that’s not really true in this case. The New York mayor’s race received rich and often ambitious coverage, as good and varied as I’ve seen at least since 2001, often from newer outlets like Politico and The City. The winner of the vote’s first round, Eric Adams, saw reporters investigate his donors and peer into his refrigerator.In an article in Columbia Journalism Review, Andrea Gabor examined coverage of the race and found that the allegations had prompted news organizations to stop covering Mr. Stringer as a top-tier candidate. She suggested that reporters “recalibrate the judgments they make on how to cover candidates such as Stringer in their wake.”In May, Mr. Stringer’s aides told me they were in talks with some former endorsers to return, as well as with the progressive movement’s biggest star, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, when they learned of an allegation from another woman: that some 30 years ago, Mr. Stringer had sexually harassed her when she worked for him at a bar. The Times reported the account of the second woman, Teresa Logan, with corroboration. The next day, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez endorsed Maya Wiley, who came in second after the in-person voting ended. She said that time was running out and that progressives had to unite, a suggestion that the second allegation had made up her mind.But when you get beyond the reporters gaming out winners and losers, and beyond politicians weighing endorsements, here’s the strange thing: It’s not clear there’s anything like a consensus among voters on how the decades-old allegations should have affected Mr. Stringer’s support. Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, for instance, has weathered far more recent claims from his own aides. And even two of the legislators who dropped their support of Mr. Stringer told me they were still wrestling with the decision and their roles and that of the media. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez seemed to signal a similar concern when, on Election Day, she revealed that she had ranked Mr. Stringer second on her ballot.State Senator Alessandra Biaggi said that the moment had been “incredibly painful” but that she’d begun to feel that “my integrity was being compromised” by staying with Mr. Stringer. She also said that if she were a New York City voter, she would have ranked Mr. Stringer among her top choices, and wished there was space for more nuance in public conversations about sexual misconduct allegations.Yuh-Line Niou, a state assemblywoman from Manhattan, told me she thought the media had unfairly “put a lot of pressure on women who are survivors to speak up,” an experience that had been “scary and in a lot of ways violent.” She said she would have backed Mr. Stringer if he’d acknowledged that he’d harmed Ms. Kim, and added that his denial revealed that he had come from “a time when people don’t talk about what it is to be human, that you have to be perfect somehow.”“I ranked him, of course,” she said. “We didn’t have many choices.”Another progressive who had dropped Mr. Stringer, Representative Jamaal Bowman, said two weeks after Ms. Kim’s allegations became public that “I sometimes regret it because I wasn’t more patient and didn’t ask more questions.”Ms. Kim’s lawyer, Ms. Pastor, said she’d been perplexed by the pained progressives. “You ought to stick to your guns,” she said.It can be hard to separate the entangled roles of media and political actors.“The same way it’s obvious that the media didn’t make Adams rise, it should be obvious that the media didn’t make Stringer fall,” the Daily News columnist and Daily Beast senior editor Harry Siegel told me. “The decision by his lefty endorsers to almost immediately walk away, and before the press had time to vet Kim’s claim, did that. Understanding that the press — and media columnists! — like to center themselves, this is a story about the Democratic Party and its factions more than it’s one about his coverage.”Mr. Stringer said that he was resolved not to relive the campaign, but that he was worried about a progressive movement setting a standard that it can’t meet.“When I think about the future, there’s a lot of progressives who under these scenarios can’t run for office,” he said.Before he headed back out onto Church Street, I asked him what he was going to do next.“Probably just run for governor,” he said, at least half seriously. More

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      Wiley Wins the Progressives: 5 Takeaways From the N.Y.C. Mayor’s Race

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      With just two weeks to go before the primary, Maya Wiley is consolidating support from the left wing of the Democratic Party.With two weeks to go before the Democratic primary, the progressive left has seemed to have coalesced around a single candidate, relying on a time-honored technique: self-elimination.The candidate is Maya Wiley, the former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio. Her rise to the top of the progressive pile did not come easily. To get there, her two rivals first had to see their campaigns implode.First to take himself out was Scott M. Stringer, the New York City comptroller. He was an original progressive favorite, until two women came forward with decades-old allegations of inappropriate sexual advances, causing many progressives leaders to withdraw their support.Next to run into trouble was Dianne Morales, the former nonprofit executive whose campaign mutinied, tried to unionize and then accused her of union-busting. It was a bad look for a woman who has run on empowering the grass roots.Support for Morales collapsesFour progressive groups, including the Working Families Party, have rescinded their endorsements for Ms. Morales. All are now endorsing Ms. Wiley, joining Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman, who endorsed her over the weekend.And three of the city’s major progressives groups, the Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club, the Jewish Vote and New York Progressive Action Network, have all moved from Ms. Morales to Ms. Wiley.“As Eric Adams and Andrew Yang continue to push dangerous pro-corporate, pro-carceral agendas, it’s more important than ever that we consolidate progressive strength to ensure a working people’s champion wins this year,” said Sochie Nnaemeka, the New York State director of the Working Families Party. “Maya Wiley has the momentum, platform and growing diverse coalition to win this race.”The rescinded endorsements follow news last week that Ms. Morales’s top adviser, Ifeoma Ike, has also defected to Ms. Wiley’s team.Although many of these groups are switching to Ms. Wiley, Shaun Donovan, the former federal housing secretary who has remained in the second tier of top candidates, is trying to take advantage of Ms. Morales’s misfortune by poaching her supporters.His campaign has sent texts to Ms. Morales’s backers highlighting his support for ending solitary confinement in prisons and removing metal detectors from schools.“Shaun is the only candidate, aside from Dianne, who has called for $3 billion to be reallocated from the police and corrections budget toward community-based public safety and racial justice initiatives,” said Jeremy Edwards, a spokesman for Mr. Donovan.A.O.C. backs list of progressives for City CouncilAlthough Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s endorsement of Ms. Wiley on Saturday made headlines, she also took a stand on the City Council race, throwing support to 60 candidates running in 31 districts.They had all signed a 30-point pledge aligned with the vision of her PAC, Courage to Change, promising to support policies like a Green New Deal, moving money from the police to social services, investing in public transit and rejecting donations from the fossil-fuel and real-estate industries.The message: Lasting movements are built from the ground up, and the fight for the bottom of the ticket is at least as important as the top-billed mayoral race.“We are advancing and making sure that we are coming together as a movement,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said, standing before rows of candidates holding purple Courage to Change signs. She urged New Yorkers in their 31 districts to vote for them.The list includes all six candidates on the Democratic Socialists of America slate: Brandon West, Michael Hollingsworth and Alexa Avilés in Brooklyn; Tiffany Cabán and Jaslin Kaur in Queens; and Adolfo Abreu in the Bronx. Those candidates are emphasizing climate and environmental-justice policies such as building publicly owned renewable-energy infrastructure and banning new fossil-fuel infrastructure like gas power plants and pipelines.In districts with several candidates from her list, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez picked top choices on the basis of their support from grass-roots groups focused on public housing, climate action and immigrant and labor rights. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez emphasized that to keep its momentum, the progressive movement needs to build a bloc in the City Council to help a Mayor Wiley shift policy to the left.“We have a candidate that grass-roots movements can work with, can influence, can shape,” she said. Trump looms over the Republican primaryThe shadow of one of the most prominent former New Yorkers loomed large over the Republican mayoral primary last week.On Thursday morning, Fernando Mateo, a restaurant owner, announced an endorsement from Michael T. Flynn, a former national security adviser to President Donald J. Trump.Hours later, Mr. Mateo announced at a debate with his opponent, Curtis Sliwa, that he had met with Mr. Trump that same day to discuss the state of New York City.“He is very saddened by the state of this city,” Mr. Mateo said of the former president, who was a lifelong New Yorker until he changed his primary residence to Florida in 2019. “President Trump has compassion for New York and New Yorkers.”A representative for Mr. Trump, who has not made an endorsement in the race, confirmed the meeting.Mr. Mateo has repeatedly voiced his support for the former president, who is under investigation by the Manhattan district attorney.Throughout his campaign, Mr. Mateo has criticized Mr. Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels who only became a Republican last year, for not supporting or voting for Mr. Trump, who remains popular with Republicans..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}The two have also sparred over the lie that Mr. Trump won the 2020 election — Mr. Sliwa says he did not — which has become a litmus test for conservative candidates across the country.Mr. Flynn, a former general who became one of the most ardent voices in Mr. Trump’s push to overturn the election and recently suggested at conference organized by adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory that he would support a military coup, cited Mr. Mateo’s embrace of the former president as the reason for his endorsement.“He understands, supports and embraces President Trump’s America First agenda,” Mr. Flynn said.McGuire’s wife cuts an adMr. Yang’s wife, Evelyn, rode the Cyclone roller coaster in Coney Island, Brooklyn, with him in his first advertisement.Mr. Stringer’s wife, Elyse Buxbaum, appears with him in an ad showing the couple getting their two sons ready for school.Now, as the former Wall Street executive Raymond J. McGuire continues to struggle in the polls, his wife, Crystal McCrary McGuire, a lawyer and filmmaker, is appearing solo in an ad set to launch on Tuesday.The ad shows Ms. McCrary McGuire with Mr. McGuire and their 8-year-old son, Leo, and talks about his work behind the scenes helping New Yorkers as a “private public servant,” including on the board of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.“There are literally hundreds of stories about how Ray has been serving the community of New York City for three decades, but he hasn’t been putting out press releases about it,” Ms. McCrary McGuire said in an interview.Mr. McGuire entered the race with strong support from the business community. He has raised more than $9 million and has a super PAC supporting his campaign, but he has not been able to break through with voters, according to available polling.Yang takes on de BlasioFor weeks, Andrew Yang has been treated by the other mayoral candidates as a front-runner, drawing sustained attacks at debates and on the campaign trail. Yet Mr. Yang is sharpening his attacks on someone who is not even running against him: Mr. de Blasio.On Tuesday, Mr. Yang delivered what his campaign called a “closing message,” blaming Mr. de Blasio and his administration for problems associated with crime and quality of life.Then on Thursday, Mr. Yang showed up outside a Y.M.C.A. in Park Slope, Brooklyn — a gym famously frequented by Mr. de Blasio — where he planned to talk about how best to “turn the page on the de Blasio administration.” (Mr. Yang was heckled by protesters and forced to leave.)It has been a shift in tone for Mr. Yang, who had for months positioned himself as an exuberant, optimistic political outsider.But the attacks serve several functions. By targeting Mr. de Blasio, Mr. Yang is seeking to cement his position as a reform candidate. He is also implicitly drawing a contrast with some of his top rivals in the race.He has cast Eric Adams, who is vying with Mr. Yang for moderate Democrats, as an ally of Mr. de Blasio. And two other rivals worked for Mr. de Blasio — Ms. Wiley and Kathryn Garcia, who served as sanitation commissioner — making criticisms of the mayor’s record a form of proxy attack against them. More

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      AOC Endorses Maya Wiley for NYC Mayor

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      Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s endorsement on Saturday may cement Ms. Wiley as the left-wing standard-bearer in the New York City mayor’s race.Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the most prominent left-wing leaders in the country, endorsed Maya D. Wiley in the race for New York City mayor on Saturday, urging voters to “come together as a movement.”Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s endorsement represents the most significant development yet in left-wing efforts to shape the June 22 Democratic primary that is almost certain to determine the city’s next mayor.“If we don’t come together as a movement, we will get a New York City built by and for billionaires, and we need a city for and by working people,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said outside City Hall in Manhattan, as Ms. Wiley waited in the background. “So we will vote for Maya No. 1.”Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s endorsement of Ms. Wiley, a civil rights lawyer and former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, comes at a moment of extraordinary volatility in the mayor’s race — one week before early voting begins.Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, has increasingly been seen as the Democratic front-runner in the race, in close competition with Andrew Yang, the former presidential candidate. Kathryn Garcia, the former sanitation commissioner, has also demonstrated growing traction. All three candidates are considered relative moderates on issues including policing and their postures toward the business community.Ms. Wiley has generally been considered part of the top tier of candidates, too, but she has not been seen as a front-runner throughout the race. In recent weeks, however, she has landed a growing number of endorsements, especially from the left. On Saturday afternoon, Representative Jamaal Bowman, another left-wing New York Democrat who is close to Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, wrote on Twitter that he, too, was supporting Ms. Wiley. But for months, it was Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s decision that had been one of the most consequential open questions in the mayor’s race.Surrogates for various candidates pitched her team. Representative Nydia M. Velázquez, a Wiley backer, encouraged Ms. Ocasio-Cortez to meet with the candidate directly. And Ms. Wiley said that she and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez had had conversations over Zoom and by phone.But, like the rest of New York City, Ms. Wiley received almost no advance notice that Ms. Ocasio-Cortez intended to endorse her on Saturday, she said. The congresswoman made the announcement following a scheduled rally with City Council candidates.“I found out right before I came down here,” Ms. Wiley said in a brief interview after the event. “I was extremely excited when she called me and said: ‘You’re my No. 1. Let’s talk about how we do this.’”For months, it was unclear whether Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, 31, would use her platform to influence the mayor’s race. Sparse public polling and interviews with party strategists suggested that a significant number of voters remained undecided, and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez’s endorsement most likely cements Ms. Wiley as the liberal standard-bearer in the contest and could signal a new measure of viability around her campaign.The endorsement may also provide a boost to the left wing of the Democratic Party, which, despite significant recent victories at the congressional and state legislative levels in New York, seemed to be at a disadvantage in the mayor’s race as leaders and activists struggled to coalesce around a single candidate.On several issues, but especially on matters of policing, Ms. Wiley has positioned herself to the left of Mr. Adams, Mr. Yang and Ms. Garcia, and her candidacy will offer an important test of how potent that pitch is among Democratic voters who want to rein in police misconduct but are also concerned about rising violent crime.“I know I’m in a different lane, because I’m in the progressive lane,” Ms. Wiley said. “I think that progressive lane is its own lane now in this race.”Ms. Ocasio-Cortez did not mention Mr. Yang or Mr. Adams by name, but she blasted the “dark money” shaping the race — both have attracted controversy over donors to their super PACs — and she implicitly warned against candidates who support what she cast as overpolicing. (Ms. Wiley also has independent expenditure support.)“We’ve already tried Giuliani’s New York,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said, adding that the city had also tried “Bloomberg’s New York.”“And what that got us was a New York that was harder to afford and a New York that criminalized young people and put them into lifelong carceral cycles,” she said. “It ends now.”.css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“These are the stakes,” she continued. “Maya Wiley is the one. She will be a progressive in Gracie Mansion.”Ms. Ocasio-Cortez has publicly rebuked Mr. Yang twice during the race: once after he laid out his plan to support a “Green New Deal for public housing,” and again following remarks he made about Israel. She indicated that she might announce “further ranks” before New York City’s ranked-choice voting election, but it would stun many political observers if Mr. Yang or Mr. Adams made her list.Ms. Wiley’s campaign has promoted a number of progressive policy proposals, including cutting $1 billion from the police budget and trimming at least 2,250 officers; helping poor families pay for child care by offering $5,000 grants to caregivers; and giving subsidies to low-income New Yorkers to help pay for rent. She is seeking to build a coalition that includes voters of color from across the ideological spectrum and white progressives.Minutes after the endorsement was announced, Mr. Adams — who, more than any candidate, is running on the issue of public safety, casting it as the “prerequisite” to prosperity — released a statement blasting Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and Ms. Wiley over the issue of police funding.“Rep. Ocasio-Cortez and Maya Wiley want to slash the Police Department budget and shrink the police force at a time when Black and brown babies are being shot in our streets, hate crimes are terrorizing Asian and Jewish communities, and innocent New Yorkers are being stabbed and shot on their way to work,” said Mr. Adams, a former police officer. “They are putting slogans and politics in front of public safety and would endanger the lives of New Yorkers.”In a statement, Ms. Wiley accused Mr. Adams of taking a “reactionary approach to public safety” and said that he was using right-wing talking points.Many left-wing activists and leaders have been divided over how to approach the mayor’s race. Some backed Ms. Wiley; others supported Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, or Dianne Morales, a former nonprofit executive. But in recent weeks, Mr. Stringer and Ms. Morales have struggled with controversies, and some of their backers have rescinded their endorsements.Mr. Stringer has faced two accusations of making unwanted sexual advances decades ago. He denied wrongdoing in one instance. On Friday, in response to a New York Times report about a second accusation of harassment and unwanted advances, he said that he did not recall the woman making the allegations but that he apologized if he had met her and made her uncomfortable.He has lost a number of high-profile left-wing endorsers, including Mr. Bowman.Ms. Morales’s struggles center on a campaign implosion, as staff members accused the campaign of not living up to its left-wing ideals, senior members departed and battles over a late-stage union drive unfolded.The Working Families Party had initially supported Mr. Stringer as its first choice and then backed Ms. Wiley and Ms. Morales after the first allegation against Mr. Stringer. On Friday, the party endorsed Ms. Wiley alone as its first choice.“We can’t afford to not engage because of what could have been,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said on Saturday. “We engage in the world that we have. And we do everything we can to make that world better. We have a choice to make New York City better.”Mihir Zaveri and Anne Barnard contributed reporting. More

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      A.O.C. Had a Catchy Logo. Now Progressives Everywhere Are Copying It.

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      The slanted text in Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s logo, and its break from the traditional red, white and blue color palette, has formed a new graphical language for progressivism. Imitators abound.In her three years in the national spotlight, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has become the undisputed face of unabashed progressivism. But there is another hidden-in-plain-sight legacy of her 2018 primary victory: Her campaign logo and poster have reshaped the visual branding of the left. More